A Numerical Malady
by marapozsa
Summary: au. minorbalthierashe. Ashe is not so much of a fool that she would actually dare to tempt fate further than she already has.


**A Numerical Malady**

aethere.

**A/N:** For Meii...because it's been a long while since I actually gave you some fic to look at.

As for the rest of you, I killed myself twice over to write this for you, since at first I wasn't exactly partial to the idea that I had to kill everyone we know and love in order to forward my otherwise dead muse.

(It ended up being pretty fun, though.)

This is a totally alternate ending to the game, just because I can. And it even comes with some balthier&ashe, balthier&fran, and larsa&penelo nibbles for you lovies out there, although I don't particularly like that first pairing pairing. I prefer the second.

_one._

Ashe has already begun to cry. With each tear comes a gasping sob as she quivers underneath Balthier's touch, letting all her fears fold in upon themselves as the man on top of her steals her dreams away. Unlike everyone else, who seeks to steal her glory, Balthier seeks nothing save for what he shouldn't be allowed to have. Glory already belongs to him, in the form of a sneering smile plastered onto a poster with a reward of several hundred thousand for his head.

It is in this manner, full of unseen curves and dead ends, that Balthier transfixes Ashe. (The happiness in his eyes isn't real.) The fact that he can have such a burden and yet be so full of vigor fascinates her because she has learned that doing so is near impossible - she has had three years to practice the thoory. She tries, truly, but perhaps her worries are more of a burden than his are. Perhaps they are of equal importance, but she feels it deeper. It's like a scratch on her very soul that way, a deep gash that Balthier can mend only temporarily.

But it is not Balthier, full of guilt, who pulls away. It is Ashe, who believes that what she feels is real and true, and also that she doesn't deserve it - not the climax yet to rock her body, ripping it apart at the seams, but the pleasure that Balthier appears to feel that depends on her presence. Balancing themselves on opposite sides of the scales, Ashe buries her face in her hands while Balthier silently mourns the future.

With a bitter smile, Balthier gives up life, pulling out from one of his nightstand drawers a gun with lilies of silver scrawling across the golden barrels; long, rigid, strong and yet lithe...it fits Ashe perfectly, so perfectly even she sees it, if only to the point where she would shatter all mirrors so as not to.

But he does not move to let her caress it. He points it between her breasts, swathed in silk, where it might shatter her ribcage or rip her windpipe in twain. It is this that Ashe knows she fears: death, death, death. Always death. Must it torment her so?

"What are you doing?" Ashe whispers, frozen with fear.

_(Yes.)_

He does not move, except to position his arms properly. Balthier decides that it may as well be worth it to take aim, even going so far as to unlock the safety on his (hers, truly) weapon. No doubt he's curious as to what sort of bullets such an otherworldly weapon uses. Has he ever seen it before? Perhaps even once it was Fran's...Fran, not Ashe's competition, but her sister. Sisters, after all, may share lovers. The stories tell Ashe so.

She tries again, holding up the sheets to her bosom as though it can serve as any more of a shield than her own flesh can. This is out of instinct: she does not want to die. She knows that queens don't make good specters. Ashe is too old to be a princess, not when she is nearing nineteen and has already lost two lovers...the first, Rasler, has been dead for quite some time, but Balthier is going to die much sooner and he knows it. Ashe is uncertain which she will remember the most, if at all.

"Balthier, how many bullets are in this gun?"

He smiles, noticing her intentional misuse of grammar. It is, in a way, the proper way to say it, since it is her gun. And while he, too, is devoid of clothing, he still has his walls up. This is the difference between them - for Ashe, it takes only a push here and there so that she will let her defenses (which she is poor at maintaining) down, but Balthier's only stay down for a few minutes before one must begin the tedious task of pushing his buttons so precisely that they come down again.

This is what Ashe tastes when she kisses him: bland feeling, absolute nothing. When he pulls away, Ashe knows that his walls are still up, and also that that now that she is incapable of tearing them down, she has no choice. In fact, she's so caught up in this conclusion that she almost fails to catch what he's saying.

"Six. There are six bullets in your," - and it is at this that Ashe smiles - "gun...one for every person you know that deserves to die."

Even after he hands her the weapon in silence, Ashe is not sure that she is hearing him right. Her smile has already faded.

_one point five._

It's surprisingly easy to aim, this gun of hers. This is the one time when Ashe will turn against her weapon (rather than vice versa), which is for the use of helping others and not hurting them. Guns themselves are poor weapons, which is why Ashe is only barely capable with one - because she holds no faith in her attempts to shoot straight. Once a bullet emerges from the barrel, there is no retrieving it. This is a summary of what Ashe hates about a gun, because she can take back none of her mistakes. Assuredly, she makes many of them. Her only excuse for this sin of hers isn't much of an excuse at all...who, for goodness' sake, lacks so much humanity that she can say that she has no choice?

Ashe, of course, does use this as her excuse, but even she knows that it is a pitiful excuse for an excuse. Clawing at the safety of the gun, she attempts to snap it shut so that she won't have to do this the hard way. Even before it happens Ashe knows that it won't work. It doesn't, either, simply because she doesn't know how to work the damn thing. If Ashe were more spiritual and aware of who she really is, she'd know that it's because her body knows better than her head. Both, sadly, are clouded.

By mistake, Ashe pulls the trigger. Her arm recoils and in the distance, the sound of a snapping string shoots through the wires, as if each wire (without thinking, Ashe knows there are five) were an oath Ashe should fulfill.

"Balthier," Ashe murmurs, but Balthier doesn't turn.

(Of course not. He's already dead.)

_one point seven five._

The princess dresses in silence. It cloaks her body as surely as his fingerprints do.

She feels as though she's not the only one who is going to die.

She isn't.

_two._

Ashe staggers out into the hallway bearing the gun, which weighs more than she expects. She hates guns: she cannot aim and she must always trust that her hands are right. This is hard because Ashe hates having to trust anything but herself. Fran leans against the door, and it is with cold unblinking eyes that she stares at Ashe down the twin barrels of the rifle she can barely lift. Then the sisterly smile that Fran saves solely for Ashe, the comforting gesture that not even Balthier is privileged enough to be bequeathed with, curves her lips up.

In contrast, her eyes are that of an already-dead woman, and her hands seem to have accepted their owner's fate when they guide the gun to her jugular. Those hands don't tremble, unfailing in their effort to save Fran and Ashe alike some dignity so that Ashe can save some of her determination for the others...especially Basch, who is - in Fran's eyes - the worst of them all. He has honor, but he is misguided in maintaining it. It is foolish of him to be so dedicated when Ashe is still nothing but a child in Fran's eyes, young enough to be her granddaughter several times over.

"I will do it for you," Fran murmurs, hand quivering from this prolonged exposure to the feel of half-death. She is still young for a viera. Can she not enjoy life for a few more years?

No.

Fran's words are all the incentive Ashe needs. When she allows the bullet to enter Fran's throat and shoot out the other side, making a sizeable dent in the wall, neither does she make any move to support the corpse as it begins to slump to the ground. Ashe's own throat seizes up when she bends down to close her would-be sister's eyes. They're already closed, eyes rolled back from the initial shock of the close-quarters hit.

Fran really had been expecting to die.

Not that Ashe is surprised.

_three._

It's only chance that makes Basch her next target. Chance that places the man in the room next to Balthier's, wedged inbetween the appropriately modest quarters Fran favors - favored, but past-tense makes it hurt even more - and Balthier's twice-as-grand cabin. Chance is the only factor in this game people call life. The other, if only present part of the time, is destiny. Ashe believes in the second and not the first. She is firm in her belief that there must be some set course of action, that if something is pre-determined then there is nothing you can do to change it.

Basch is the one that she will regret, just as Fran is the only one of them who instills a sense of grief, of something missing, in her vaguely tyrannical mindset. Older sisters will do that. Basch is more of a father than anything else...Basch, who will have died in her place if she might even so much as have been touched by an enemy. He is the one of them who is unpredictable in that when he swings his weapon it is all or nothing - the only constant thing about that axe of his. The fiends all flock to him - not because he is any more intimidating than any of them or because he is faster or more accurate, but because they know that no matter how long they dodge his attacks, sooner or laster one will hit them. Then it will be all over...their hard work wasted because they didn't finish him off earlier.

They flock to him because of fear.

Ashe moves toward him for much the same reason; she may not fear him, but she knows that this will be just as difficult as the rest, if not less, as long as she can avoid his strike long enough. If she cannot get it over with quickly, chances are she never will.

She swallows hard on the lump in her throat.

Despite this, it simply won't stay down.

_three point five._

Basch is keenly sharp where Ashe is blunt in her actions. As soon as she enters the room, he has her up against the wall, hands pressed flat on either side of her face so that she can only look and not touch. The gun she clutches to her chest so that it digs harshly into her breast. If it leaves a mark, she can't see, and Ashe slumps to the ground as soon as Basch backs away. He greets her in a vague form of embarassment, nodding her way and apologizing by way of a surprised greeting: "My lady...you surprised me."

"And I you."

She gasps the words like a fish. This greeting of his is not his fatal move, but when he moves to question - she sees it in his eyes - the weapon she holds (as if it has ever been anything but hers) she is seized by this sudden urge to do away with the face on his shoulders.

She misses his eyes, his forehead, his honest mouth and crinkled brow...she bloody _misses_ and hits him square in the chest instead.

The shame is almost too much to take.

She could have afforded him a more honorable death if she'd only **tried**.

_four._

Ashe is suddenly angry. Penelo has no right - no right at all - to look happy when she's about to die. She does, though, nestled in a vaguely cocoon-like jumble of blankets and pillows, serene. Penelo probably doesn't make it a habit to sleep nude. Her clothes are tossed over a nearby chair...she has nothing to fear. Balthier has Fran in his clutches, perhaps even the other way around. Basch is disinclined to pedophilic urges. Vaan can't even tell a rat's ass from a girl's. Larsa isn't within a mile of her; nor Vayne, whom Ashe doubts would care what crawled into his bed so long as it had an arse attached. Out of all of them, she is the one most likely to survive with her innocence intact. By this, Ashe means through womanhood, not death, or perhaps the mad quest they are all a part of.

Either way, it looks like she won't survive the night, let alone Larsa's romantic endeavors: one clean shot lets it all out. Penelo's guts and fake bravado as well as the fourth bullet Ashe has had the misfortune of handling thus far...it all bleeds dark on the otherwise white sheets.

She brushes away Penelo's bleached bangs affectionately, leaving a mark that will stick to her brow.

_five._

As soon as Ashe steps out of the room, she knows that this is wrong. She feels it the same as she feels the slick feel of blood (not hers) splayed across her breast. Vaan will be the hardest of them all to kill. Ashe knows that Vaan is the only one of them all that does not expect it. But there are originally six bullets in Balthier's gun (only two are left), which is heavy in Ashe's hands, and Ashe must use them all up.

"I'm going to die," are the words she remembers from last night, full of blurred images and raw emotion rather than anything definite. One image in particular stands out vivid: Balthier, wrapped in black satin sheets caressing Ashe's face with a hand devoid of rings, whispering those words. When Ashe conjures up this image, she is near tears because even though Balthier is lying dead in the next room and she could go and watch his body rot any tiime she wants, she doesn't want to. His eyes scare her too much.

Glassy, blank, fire dying as she watches...this is how they will all end up. Speeding up the pace of what she must do is only Ashe's way of preserving them, saving them from Vayne's choice of death. Unknowingly, they will become martyrs and live on forever where they might have died if it weren't for her. Ashe regrets that it's come to this, but she is the gods' champion, and even Venat would agree that her companions could not be suitable sidekicks. But Venat does not control her, so Ashe cannot blame this on anyone but herself.

It has always been this way.

Crossing the corridors, of which there are only a few, Ashe jumps at every noise until Vaan emerges from the room she and he share, the slamming door signalling his entrance into her mad, mad world. Vaan has enough gall to bear Penelo's body in his hands laboriously, ensuring that Ashe realizes the full consequences of what she has done. He probably doesn't realize it, but Ashe's already accepted those consequences. This only makes her cry more, something she seems to be doing much more often than she wants to, since Vaan will never let her live if he knows what she has done...what she has _become_.

Staggering and unable to walk in a straight line if it kills him, Vaan seems to be incapable of moving in a straight line. Because of his haphazard clothing, all metal and funny ornaments, there are lines on Penelo's body where the metal has cut into her gentle flesh. None bleed, but they're pink enough to look that way, as if Penelo's blood is watered down to make room for her vivacious spunk. Leave it to Penelo to make death look pretty.

Yet it seems as if he does expect something. Vaan looks her in the eye as she takes aim, now more familiar with the gun in her hand than she would ever admit, almost as if he's willing to accept death without a word of his usual protest. His youth wins over his apologies, however, and Vaan's knees buckle so that Ashe's bullet sails overhead.

This is the first mistake she makes - not predicting that Vaan, who is younger than Penelo by a week but would never admit it, wants to hold onto life even more than the others do.

(Did.)

Ashe drops the gun out of instinct.

Vaan does not let Penelo's body touch the metal grating beneath their feet for a single moment. Instead, he lets her head loll over his shoulder as he hoists her onto his back in the same manner as he had when they were both children. Already, her eyes no longer look as warm, and Vaan's bare flesh crawls with the idea that Penelo is bleeding roses onto his bent and broken spine. He is tempted to let her fall in his horror but thinks better of it.

Vaan, instead, is the one who falls. Penelo (who now seems to weigh about as much as a cloud does to the sky) doesn't stir or move to defend her friend. Ashe gropes for her weapon on her hands and knees, struggling against vertigo she hasn't yet experienced. The ceiling stretches overhead, limiting her movement, and beneath her the pinpricks in the rusted steel are spotted with the verdant landscape below. Ignoring it as best she can, Ashe goes to examine the barrel. There aren't injuries that she should gripe about. If there are, she can't see them.

"You could let me live. Why does it have to be this way?" he whispers, on his knees before her in a macabre imitation of a subject prostrating before his ruler. Ashe rules no one in the Strahl, however, and this confuses her enough to let her knees buckle as well.

She listens.

(This is the second mistake.)

For the singular moment before she removes the dagger from Vaan's stomach, right below his no-longer-beating heart, and is tempted to stab herself in the same place, Ashe is equals with a man whose life has all but been a mockery of hers: both deprived of what they loved, what they couldn't have, what they might have a chance at but probably (in the end) won't.

In fact, when Ashe thinks on it, they all had something in common.

_six._

Ashe looks on at the last bullet she's got with horror, at least until she realizes something: the bullet is not for her.

This last bullet is different; it the only one of its kind that is made in part, if not entirely, of nethicite. With every pulse of its near-sentient being, Ashe shudders in fear of the unknown. That's really what death is all about.

But when she finally reaches Vayne, cocooned inside his own splendor and torrential magnificence, she finds that she cannot lift the gun any longer; collapsing in front of the tyrant without so much as another breath to breathe. And Vayne himself? He cannot pull the trigger. It will not yield to the man, who has always been the master of what he could not control, even when his sin-filled hands mar the side of the rifle. Blood leaks from one of his fingernails as he tries to pull the trigger with a pretty aristocrat's finger.

Throwing the gun on the ground, his intentions of ending the story with a measure of irony thwarted as all his intentions are, Vayne waves impatiently at the Occurian he believes he commands. Vayne is a sick man, one without the honor that all Occurians value, who would rather leave his opponent lying on the ground in a daze than fight her. Ashe is seized by a wracking cough, blood inhaled where her breath should have sufficed. Again does she collapse, whereas Vayne is left standing.

After nudging her body coldly - thereby leaving a dirt smear on her cheek - he leaves her lying where she is. Venat is seized by a fit of anger. A secret of the Undying is revealed when she assumes human form where her companions, Gerun in particularly, are so bogged down with their sin that they no longer have the luxury of humanity. That is the punishment of those false gods who believe only in the form of false divinity. Ashe, it seems, has come back to life, but her eyes are that of an Occurian (cold, burning with the fire of hell, well-meaning no longer) and the contours of her form blur as if the rest of the world are the ones who are moving in slow-motion. She grasps the gun, now emblazoned with two scratches that sever the stems of the green from the rest of the white flowers.

As Venat-of-Ashe watches, the gold and black bleeds into the white, poisoning it as surely as Ashe's pure soul does Venat's unclean one. Nothing occurs to indicate vice versa. Can one affect another and still remain the same?

Maybe.

_six point five._

Venat-of-Ashe overtakes the man she wants to make die, burying him in an unmarked grave when she pulls the trigger where Ashe cannot. Only Ashe, who is barely alive, can hear the snapping cord. When he falls to the ground, the particles of Vayne's body take on a rainbow hue and dissolve into the ground. The other Occuria seem to revere him, but Venat (simply Venat, and now Ashe as well) is filled only with disgust at the thought of the power-hungry man she was forced to manipulate - everyone in the world, in a way, is her pawn.

When her soul dissolves in turn - so deadly is a human to one of Venat's kind - Venat-of-Ashe is content knowing that at least Vayne does not go unpunished.

Ashe falls to the ground for the second time, with no wings to support her body like the puppet strings her tendons are akin to.

This time, she stays dead.

**fin.**

**A/N:** No, this does not adhere to any sort of logic. Thanks for reading, though.


End file.
